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A Spoonful of Sugar:

Hostilities, Sweets, and Language

The landscape of an internet search for information is strewn with rabbit holes that appear at first glance to offer suitable revelations but then entice one onward into a seemingly endless network of connections, possibilities, and false leads. This is the story of one such maze that I wandered into recently and the unexpected illumination I encountered below the surface.

I fill some of my time doing research and writing on a number of subjects; at the moment, I am documenting the details of a 2015 trip that my son Ned and I took to France and Belgium. We not only traveled to unfamiliar places but we traveled back in time to the Western Front of WWI. The so-called “Great War” has just now passed the edge of living human memory and moved into the realm of history and archeology. We “remember” the war by the objects left behind: photographs, letters, journals, damaged landscapes, rusted armament, monuments, and cemeteries. One historically rich category of such objects is century-old, war-related postcards.

Verdun en 1916 pendant la bataille, Arrivées des Dragées de Verdun.

The antique postcard above, titled “Verdun en 1916 pendant la bataille, Arrivées des Dragées de Verdun,” arrived recently as an eBay purchase and it fit nicely into my research about the Battle of Verdun. The English translation of the title is: “Verdun in 1916 during the battle, the arrival of "Dragées" of Verdun.” The image presents five French soldiers unloading artillery rounds. I wondered what Dragée meant and why it was capitalized. I’m not a cook or a baker but if you are, then perhaps you are ahead of me. It wasn’t hard to find a definition of dragée on the internet; 

dra·gée/dräˈZHā/noun

1. A candy consisting of a center such as an almond or hazelnut covered with a sugar coating. 2. Small silver balls or colored bits of candy for use in decorating cookies or cakes.

It was only a short internet step from dragée to "Jordan Almonds," the more "sophisticated" choice of sweets for a first date to the movies in the 1950s or 60s. Jordan Almonds are commonly known to the French as "dragées." Many cooks and bakers are aware of this French word for these confectionary bits, but this postcard is from one of the most horrendous military engagements of World War I.  Why does its title refer to candy? 

The WWI battle of Verdun was ten months of horrendous combat in appalling conditions as the German army attacked the French fortifications north of Verdun, France, in 1916. The losses were staggering on both sides, with 600,000 soldiers left dead or wounded. More than sixty-million artillery shells fell during nearly-uninterrupted barrages by both armies, pulverizing forts, trenches, roads, villages, and the city of Verdun. This postcard describes artillery shells as sugar-coated candy, so perhaps it’s a cruel pun. “Here, enemy troops, swallow these little, sweet treats!”

Postcard, Verdun, Mazel Place, after WWI bombardment, 1916.

Just around another corner of my internet journey, I discovered a book of French and English slang, cant, or argot, published in London in 1899 by Albert Barrére, and titled, A New French and English Dictionary of the Cant Words, Quaint Expressions, Slang Terms, and Flash Phrases Used in the High and Low Life of Old and New Paris––and there it was––page 120: “Dragée, f. (military), bullet, “plum.” Dragée, properly sweetmeat. Gober une dragée –– to receive a bullet.” 

Title page, Argot and Slang, A. Barrére, London, 1899.

This odd, jam-packed book represents a lifetime of Barrére’s work recording thousands of slang words in French and English. The work is available online through the generous efforts of Marcia Brooks, Hugo Voisard, Fay Dunn, and the proofreading team at Distributed Proofreaders, http://www.pgdp.net, an organization that converts public domain books into e-books for the benefit of all. 

In the introduction to the book, the author, Monsieur Barrére, described his interest in linguistics: 

During a long course of philological studies, extending over many years, I have been in the habit of putting on record, for my own edification, a large number of those cant and slang terms and quaint expressions of which the English and French tongues furnish an abundant harvest. Whatever of this nature I heard from the lips of persons to whom they are familiar, or gleaned from the perusal of modern works and newspapers, I carefully noted down, until my note-book had assumed such dimensions that the idea of completing a collection already considerable was suggested… 

Argot is but a bastard tongue grafted on the mother stem… [and it] pervades the whole of French society. It may be heard everywhere, and it is now difficult to peruse a newspaper or open a new novel without meeting with a sprinkling of some of the jargon dialects of the day. These take their rise in the slums, on the boulevards, in workshops, barracks, and studios, and even in the lobbies of the Houses of Legislature.

An argo, or a cant, is a unique language of a particular group or profession used as a means of cohesion or to exclude others. The term cant is often used in a disparagingly, as when describing the cant of thieves, gypsies, or beggars. Noted French authors like Victor Hugo and Balzac used such argot or slang for good purpose when putting words in the mouths of their fictional characters. In Les Misérables, Hugo describes argot as the language of the underworld, a dark and “deadly language of misery.”

For years the French have used the word dragée, a sweet candy, as a pun for a bullet. In his highly acclaimed work, La Boue [The Mud], based on his experiences as a French soldier during WWI, Maurice Genevoix describes a scene during an artillery barrage: “Tomorrow morning, eight o’clock. There are batteries all along 372, batteries behind Senoux, batteries in the Bois-Haut, batteries everywhere ... The shooting will start all at once, all the dragées loosed on the salient boche.” 

The French dragées, which we know as Jordan Almonds, are said to have been invented in ancient Rome, about 177 BCE, when a baker named Julius Dragatus, created honey-covered almonds as a special confection. Called dragati, these sweet treats were later coated with sugar and served at the weddings and births of the nobility. After sugar was brought to Europe by the crusaders in the 13th century, it was often used to coat medicines to making them more palatable. That’s right, Mary Poppins fans, “a spoonful of sugar…” 

Verdun, 1638. Wikimedia (unknown origin) Public Domain

In the mid-1300s an apothecary in Verdun began coating medicines with sugar and calling them dragées and a Verdun grocer began creating dragées as sugar-coated almond candies. The word dragée is closely related to dredge, an English transitive verb meaning to coat (food) with powder, sugar, or flour. And dredge origins are the Middle English dragge, from Old French dragie, both meaning to dredge a sweetmeat, perhaps from Latin tragēmata, confectionary, so perhaps it all started with Julius Dragatus in ancient Rome. 

My adventure down this particular rabbit hole had taken an unexpected turn––from the vicious tools of warfare to the histories of languages and sweets––but it was only a matter of one more twist to come back to Verdun as this beautiful image popped up on my monitor:

Braquier Dragées, Verdun, France.

Note: This product is available online in this beautiful tin from Yummy Bazaar at: https://yummybazaar.com/search?q=french%20dragees 

The English name, Jordan Almonds, may be related to the River Jordan, after a variety of almonds grown there, or it may be a derivation of the French word jardin, meaning garden. The very popular Dragées des Verdun are still being produced there today. Elsewhere, Jordan almonds have long been popular, not only at the movies, but for hundreds of years, in many cultures, they have been offered as traditional wedding favors and to some they are thought to be an aphrodisiac. 

At this point in my exploration, I quickly backed out of one internet maze and entered another, as I placed an online order for Dragées des Verdun. They should arrive soon, and I look forward to sharing them with friends and displaying the colorful tin alongside my collection of Verdun WWI postcards. Note that the boy on the far left of the illustration on the tin is wearing the early WWI French red and blue uniform.

The 1916 postcard provides a detailed view of preparations behind the lines of the Western Front, and it offers other avenues of research including the details of the artillery shells, the soldier’s uniforms, and the truck. During WWI, automobiles and trucks began to replace mule or horse-drawn wagons as a means of transporting people, equipment, and supplies. One can read numbers stenciled on the truck, and that, along with other details such as the hard-rubber tires, could likely identify the make of the truck. Similarly, the men’s uniforms can date the image. For example, the fellow in the center is wearing the metal Adrian helmet, which was introduced in the summer of 1915. 

Beyond the historical details found on old postcards, a handwritten message, address, postal cancellation, or other markings, may divulge much more.

When I was an elementary school student, my teachers frequently asserted that I wasn’t working to my “full potential” or that I was “not applying” myself.  Many years later, I often go to sleep or wake up with a recurring thought: There is so much more to do and learn. I seem motivated by deadlines, and old age arrives with a very literal deadline. The future may seem a bit short but, on the other hand, I am grateful to have planned ahead and arranged to access entire libraries and worldwide travel via cyberspace––and at speeds my teachers could not have imagined.

Ken Wilson
ken-wilson.com


Postscript Comment:

Praise the Lord and Pass the Tootsie Rolls (1)

An unexpected additional turn to this particular rabbit hole Occurred when my mother-in-law, Ginny Little, read this blog entry. She told me that an old familyfriend, the late Fred Glueck, had often related a story about his experience as a Marine at Chosin Reservoir in 1950 during the Korean War. The story involves 60mm mortar rounds being referred to as "Tootsie Rolls­"­––with unexpected results.

In November 1950, the First Marine Division and two US Army combat teams were in a very tough spot in the mountains of North Korea. Their location was the Changjin Reservoir, known to American troops as “Chosin.” Facing ten Divisions of Chinese, they had suffered 3,000 killed and 6,000 wounded in two weeks; it was freezing; they were low on ammunition and food; they had been written off as lost. 

In radio transmissions, the beleaguered troops requested 60mm mortar rounds, and the code word for the ammunition was “Tootsie Rolls.” One such message was translated verbatim without the code, and soon boxes of Tootsie Rolls were dropped to the troops by parachute. The unexpected sweets provided the men with welcome calories and energy; the soldiers also melted the frozen candy in their mouths and under their arms, and used the resulting soft “putty” to make equipment repairs. Ed Szymciak, a Marine from Ohio, was quoted as saying “By large, Tootsie Rolls were our main diet while fighting our way out of the Reservoir. You can bet there were literally thousands of Tootsie Roll wrappers scattered over North Korea.” (2)

Ginny told me that their friend Fred often spoke of reunions of the Marines who called themselves the "Chosin Few" and that he proudly called himself one of the Tootsie Roll Marines."


Also See: 2017 Facebook post by Susan Kee, Honoring Korean War Veterans:
https://www.facebook.com/susankeewriter/posts/what-is-the-connection-between-tootsie-rolls-and-the-battle-of-chosin-reservoiri/710951165762453/ 

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praise_the_Lord_and_Pass_the_Ammunition

2. http://thekwe.org/memoirs/szymciak/index.htm